1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus and method for handling audio/video (AV) content transmitted by digital and analog broadcasting, and particularly to a broadcast receiver capable of easily recording a broadcast program on a self-contained information recording medium such as an HDD. The present invention also relates to a broadcast program recording method, and to an information recorder therefor.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, in addition to conventional analog television broadcasting, digital television broadcasting has become widespread by broadcasting methods such as satellite broadcasting, satellite communication, and terrestrial broadcasting. A system for receiving various kinds of broadcasts for general household use is now widely available. Since the system can provide many more channels than those provided by conventional analog broadcasting, an extremely large number of programs can be broadcast. At the same time, for households to record and play the large number of broadcast programs, various AV machines such as digital video tape recorders and disk recorders have become commercially available.
Moreover, with increases in speed of information transmission (such as 20 Mbps), streaming video recorder/players are available and include large capacity information recording medium, such as a hard disk drive (HDD). Such recorders are capable of receiving multiple channels and can record audio/video streaming data on the HDD. JP-A-2002-32975 discloses the technology for a disk-shaped recording medium, which is a data writer for such a streaming player/recorder which can store data even after the machine shuts down due to a power failure.
Streaming data recorders generally search the storage status of data on vacant areas of the hard disk drive when the streaming player/recorder is turned on, to manage information writing/reading operations on the recording medium in an optimum manner. At that time, in the conventional technology, in writing information to the receiver on the HDD, audio/video streaming data is written in the HDD in 1980K-byte units, based on the Universal disk format (UDF) standard. Other data (such as program information) is written in sectors of 2K bytes. To manage how the information is recorded on the HDD, a UDF bitmap is created for each of the sectors, and bitmap information, known as AU bitmap is created for each 1980K-byte unit is written on the HDD.
To implement optimum management of an HDD on startup, the conventional technology described above searches the disk in sectors of 2K bytes and in units of 1980K bytes to check the data storage status and locate vacant areas of the HDD. The conventional technology always requires search operations for creating bitmap information for optimum HDD management on startup. Therefore, a relatively long time is required to complete the machine startup, resulting in slow machine startup, which is inconvenient for users.